Ben Bakes a Cake!

Ice Creams

2008-07-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to try making an ice cream in the style of Jeni's Ice Cream of Columbus, OH. Her flavors are fascinating, but even more interesting to me is that, unlike every other ice cream recipe in the universe, these are thickened with corn starch instead of eggs. Using the vanilla recipe as a base, I did a cinnamon ice cream with a muscovado brown sugar swirl. Okay, I kind of made up the swirl part and it was really more brown sugar chunks than swirls, but whatever... it was a good ice cream. I brought it to a picnic at the park last week with some sugar cones and it disappeared in no time. Not sure if anyone got pictures, but I'll see what I can find. Incidentally, if you ever have $100 to blow on a birthday gift for someone, I can think of worse gifts than Jeni's Signature 9.

With the leftover milk and cream, I threw together a more traditional egg-thickened ice cream with chai latte mix, extra cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and cardamom, and chopped coffee beans. Also not bad, especially considering I just pulled it off the top of my head. I think next time I would try candying the coffee beans, to cut the bitterness a little further. Still have a pint of this left, if you can make it to my place in the next few days. :)

Chocolate Babka

2008-07-22T14:46:00.000-07:00

This is one of the more successful recipes I've done in a while. People really responded well to it, and the final product looked kind of rustic and professional at the same time. This style of babka is basically an extra-buttery challah dough with a giant swirl of chocolate through it and a streusel topping. The filling was made of dark chocolate, cake crumbs (great way to reuse leftovers), and pureed apricot jam for kind of a mild sweet tanginess. Even though the recipe was kind of long, it came together very easily. Definitely a recipe I'd keep on hand to throw together for a potluck or brunch. It'd be fun to try other filling flavors, too, like cinnamon. Speaks well for the new book I got the recipe from, The Art of the Dessert.

Daring Bakers: Opera Cake

2008-05-29T17:25:00.000-07:00

This month's Daring Bakers challenge was an Opera Cake, but with a slight twist. Traditionally made with coffee and lots of chocolate, this recipe was going for more of a springtime pastel look and taste. The birthday boy, my friend Michael, requested mint and chocolate. To kind of compromise this with the no-chocolate stipulation, I avoided using actual chocolate, but instead made the simple syrup component with a chocolate extract. The syrup was absorbed into the almond cake layers of the Opera Cake, imparting a hint of chocolateyness, but no dark color. I haven't used this extract much, so it was interesting to see the effect it had. For peppermint, I infused dry peppermint leaves into heavy cream, whipped the cream, and incorporated it into the white chocolate mousse layer. I had a really hard time whipping the cream, which should be really simple. I broke it twice and had to go out to buy more. Could some chemical in the peppermint interfere with whipping? I'll have to look it up. Also mixed just a bit of the mousse into the buttercream for a little extra flavor. All in all, pretty successful. I don't think anybody at the birthday party complained.

Daring Bakers: Cheesecake Pops

2008-04-28T22:25:00.000-07:00

The latest Daring Bakers challenge: Cheesecake Pops. Not my favorite cheesecake recipe of all time, but a really cute concept. Clever method to freeze the pops after forming and stabbing them to make them sturdy enough to handle for dipping/decorating. I opted to half-dip them in milk chocolate and half-dip them in dark chocolate. I used Guittard, courtesy of Eclipse. I also topped them with graham cracker crumbs, to better tie in with actual cheesecake. Did a few with Maldon sea salt, because why not? Took some to a picnic potluck and the rest into work, where they were hoarded jealously.

Daring Bakers: Perfect Party Cake

2008-03-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

This was my second challenge from the Daring Bakers site and, lo and behold, I already owned the book that the recipe was from. The Perfect Party Cake is from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. The cake part was a very nice, basic white cake, with a tiny bit of a lemon flavor. The filling in the recipe is raspberry jam, but I had a random jar of sour cherry and rhubarb jam that worked out really well. The really new part for me was the buttercream, which I think was a Swiss buttercream, rather than the Italian style I usually make. With the Italian buttercream, you whip egg whites and gently pour in hot, melted sugar. With this recipe, the sugar and egg whites are stirred together over a double boiler and then whipped. For both methods, you finish it off with tons and tons of butter. I really liked this recipe. It was a bit less involved to execute and I thought the resulting buttercream was exceptionally creamy and non-greasy. I put the stripey pattern on the sides with my new cake comb and then Will helped me come up with the pink sugar (reduced cranberry juice tossed with sugar) to decorate the top. I took the cake into work the next day and it didn't take long for it to disappear.

Chocolate Souffle Cake

2008-03-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

This one is from a month or two ago. My condo's social committee had a chocolate-themed potluck event. Well, I couldn't pass that up. And, of course, I had to impress, but also didn't have time to shop for ingredients. I got this recipe from the Tartine Bakery cookbook. (Incidentally, I'm pretty psyched to visit the actual bakery in SF next week.) It's a really interesting recipe. Flourless chocolate cake, so it's super rich. Unlike other flourless chocolate cakes, though, it's souffled, meaning whipped egg whites are folded in right before baking, which give it a lot of lightness and volume when the air bubbles expand in the oven. There's also a step of whipping the egg yolks and folding that in. Crazy. Wasn't sure what to do with the presentation. That's something I need to get better at. Anyway, it turned out to be practically the only homemade thing at the party. Went over very well, I'd say.

Caramel Almond Tart

2008-03-12T21:54:00.001-07:00

Had friends over on Sunday and made this Caramel Almond Tart from David Lebovitz's blog, originally from Chez Panisse. I followed the directions exactly, heating the cream and sugar until it foamed up, then adding the almonds and amaretto, but it didn't seem to react as described. Maybe I should have cooked it on the stove longer to darken/thicken the caramel? It was pretty wet when it went into the oven and took longer to bake than predicted, but it all seemed to work out find in the end. Crispy and buttery and almondy and yum. Nobody complained.

Daring Bakers: French Bread

2008-03-01T23:42:00.000-08:00

So, I recently joined this monthly baking challenge website, The Daring Bakers. Did my first challenge last week, Julia Child's French Bread recipe. Gotta admit, I underestimated this one. Sure, the recipe was 15 pages long, but I've made bread before. No problem. Mostly, it was just time consuming. I didn't plan ahead very well, started it at one o'clock and was basically babysitting a ball of dough until midnight. Kneading it, letting it rise, shaping it, repeat, repeat. And after all that, I end up with these crazy misshapen blobs of loaves. Something happened moving it from the counter into the oven. Pretty gracelessly on my part. You can see in the pics how it looks beautiful until right before the end. Gotta admit, though, it tasted amazing. Best crust I've ever gotten on homemade bread, too. Looking forward to the next challenge, where I'll be a little more careful with everything.

Rice Pudding

2008-02-20T22:32:00.000-08:00

For some reason, I've been craving rice pudding. It worked out today because I had some milk that only had a couple good days left in it and a package of raisins from my mom that I was never going to get around to eating. I usually don't like raisins in my rice pudding (although Craisins are another story), but I figured I could do something to doctor them up a bit. Ended up simmering them with some apple cider vinegar, cinnamon sticks, clove syrup (leftover from some Thanksgiving mixology) and a splash of vanilla extract. Not bad. Certainly aromatic.

Oh, also, I really like to make rice pudding with Arborio rice. It's a shorter-grained Italian rice usually used for risotto. I dunno, it's just got this dense chewiness to it that I like. I probably could have used a little more milk than I did; the pudding came out a little dry. But still yummy.

More Thanksgiving Desserts

2007-11-25T21:03:00.000-08:00

Had lots of people over for Thanksgiving this year, so we needed a lot of desserts. First, a blueberry-swirled cheesecake with blueberry topping. I got a lot of comments on people liking the graham-cracker crust on this. It's just graham crackers, butter, and sugar, so I all I can think is that blind-baking it did some fun caramelizing stuff. Next, a butterscotch pie using this recipe, with a couple extra eggs for thickening. Also used the leftover pie crust from a couple posts ago. And for the big finale, individual baked alaskas with pumpkin ice cream and ginger cake. I've ever made nor eaten a baked alaska before, but I was pretty pleased with the results. It was a little harried getting them all meringued up in the middle of the party, but it was a fun experiment, and everyone who had one seemed to enjoy it.

Thanksgiving 2007 Prep

2007-11-20T22:22:00.000-08:00

Got a head start on Thanksgiving with a couple desserts: Molasses Cookies (very popular a couple years ago) and Vegan Cranberry Upside Down Cake. They look good, at least. Results to be determined.

Blueberry Pie, New Food Processor

2007-11-17T10:31:00.000-08:00

A little pre-Thanksgiving experimentation with a new pie crust recipe from Cook's Illustrated. Instead of being super careful to have frozen solid butter and cutting it into the dough to just the right amount, they worked out a recipe where you can just blend it all to heck, as long as you reserve a little un-buttered flour to toss in at the end. They replace some of the water with vodka, too, to cut down on gluten formation. It was awfully easy, but I can't decide about the results. Nice, but a little dense. I saved half for a Thanksgiving pie next week, so we'll see how it works out a second time. Blueberry because I couldn't resist a giant bag of them at Costco.

Wedding Cake

2007-11-12T22:13:00.000-08:00

Finally, FINALLY organized some pictures of Dinah and Eli's wedding cake. Congrats again, you crazy kids! And thanks to everyone who brought a camera. We ended up going with a white cake with alternating layers of lime and pomegranate curds, iced with white chocolate buttercream. The decoration on top is pomegranate arils and sunflowers from the reception. Candied lime slices ring the base of each tier.

Espresso Training

2007-10-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

This week I attended a series of training sessions at Caffe Calabria, which is going to be the espresso supplier for Eclipse. Calabria is a local coffee bean roasting company with a great reputation and is apparently known all over the world. They're very insistent that anyone using their beans knows how to make the best espresso possible. We had to learn about all sorts of variables that can affect the quality of a shot. After a bit of book-learning, we got to practice pulling shots over and over again. Then we spent a day steaming milk for lattes and cappuccinos. I've never been able to drink a latte or cappuccino straight, but these were so smooth... well, it was impressive. This should mean the coffee at Eclipse will be top notch. I'm looking forward to putting in a shift behind the counter now and then. I think I must be growing some serious tolerance for coffee, because the amount I put away that last day of class really should have had me bouncing of the walls. Instead, nothing. Go figure.

Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream

2007-09-20T00:13:00.001-07:00

I know I keep saying this, but I have got to start disciplining myself to write up these projects in a reasonable time. I've wanted to make this recipe since I saw it on David Lebovitz's blog almost six months ago. Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream! Who doesn't love any component of that title. The fun part is that the ice cream is so fancy, but the ingredients are so basic. Sugar, butter, milk cream, etc. It's all in how you prepare them. I did finally buy my first fleur de sel (fancy sea salt). Good stuff. Will just would not let me use regular kosher salt.

I do think I took the caramel to just a little bit too high a temperature. The final ice cream was noticeably bitter in kind of a dark coffee way. Great flavor, but perhaps for a specific palate. A friend of mine said she had some with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and that sounds to me like the perfect complement to mellow things out. In the pictures, you can see how the recipe called for a sheet of hard caramel as a mix-in, which I got to crush up with my mortar and pestle. Don't use that thing often enough.

Wedding Cake Trial Run

2007-07-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, spent tonight assembling the trial run cake for Dinah and Eli. I've been working on the components a bit every night this week. We settled on flavors weeks ago, but I wanted to provide a few decorating options. I'm no artist, but Dinah had some ideas, and I had some ideas, and Will had one or two, and between those I put together a few options on one big schizophrenic cake. I'm driving it up to OC tomorrow for Dinah and some of the rest of the family to get a good look and make the final decisions. And to see my adorable new nephew. You know, from the last wedding I did a cake for.

So, the pictures... the individual white cake layers (the spirals are simple syrup, helps keep the cake moist). Oh, I used a wire slicers to horizontal slice each cake into two layers and it worked really, really well. Way smoother than hand-slicing it with a big ol' knife. Each tier is three layers of cake, with one layer of pomegranate and one layer of lime curd in between. White chocolate buttercream on the outside. You can also see the different decorating ideas I tried. Candied lime slices in various arrangements. Smooth sides, vertical stripes, crazy stippling patterns. Surely amongst all that is some perfect combination of features.

I'll take some live-action cake-eating pictures tomorrow.

Shaker Lemon Pie

2007-06-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

Tried out a new cookbook, Tartine by Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson, with a Shaker Lemon Pie. I'd never seen anything like this before. The filling is just lemon slices, sugar, and eggs. While it's baking in the oven, the sugar candies the lemon and the eggs thicken it into a curd. By the time it's done, you can eat every bit of the lemon, even the rind. It's tart, but really good. I totally want to try it with limes now. I don't know if the Shakers did that too much.

This book is seriously beautiful. I may have to make everything in it.

Taste-Testing Cake Flavors

2007-05-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

I forgot my camera, but Dinah got some pictures of the wedding cake taste testing. Yes, I numbered the cakes and I had a chart to remind me what was what. None of them were exactly bad, but there were a few clear favorites. Also, oranges? Difficult to slice thin and candy. I can't really recommend it. Limes were a snap.

Trying Out Wedding Cake Components

2007-05-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

Dinah and Eli requested something light, summery, and citrusy for their wedding cake and we talked about a few flavor options. I've spent the last couple weeks making (and freezing) all sorts of possible components. A couple spice cakes, a white chocolate cake, a plain white cake, buttercreams from four different books, lime curd, lemon curd, two blood orange curd recipes. Oh, and candied slices of lime. It got to be kind of a lot to keep track of. I had a chart at one point. Ended up assembling 5 different cakes, each with a unique combination of components. Stay tuned for pictures of the taste testing.

Chocolate Muffins

2007-05-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

Made these for Mother's Day, from Harold Friberg's Professional Pastry Chef book. They actually have beets grated into the batter and I had some beets to use up. Portioning with the ice cream scoop is the only way to go with muffin pans. I've never had them come out so uniformly sized. Will did a burnt caramel ganache for the glaze. Brought them to a family party. Positively received.

White Spice Bundt Pound Cake

2007-04-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

Made this White Spice Pound cake from The Cake Bible for a coworker's birthday recently. It's called that because it's basically a plain pound cake with just a little bit of cinnamon, cloves, and cocoa powder. Little enough cocoa that it only counts as a spice and doesn't make a chocolate cake. First baked goods brought to new job! Ok, maybe second. Made and froze an extra 6" cake as a test flavor for the upcoming wedding cake. Also used some blood orange juice to make a glaze. Learned two important lessons. One... when dealing with a bundt pan with especially deep valleys like this one, be sure to fill it up all the way, or it will break right apart. Two... when making a simple, simple (d'oh) glaze, do not absentmindendly dump in all available liquid; gradually add enough to make it the right consistency. There, silver lining!

Orange Chocolate Baklava

2007-03-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

When Michael M suggested a Mediterranean theme for Sunday's dinner, I took the opportunity to try Scharffenberger's Orange Chocolate Baklava recipe from The Essence of Chocolate. The chocolate part is chopped up chocolate bits in the filling. The orange flavor is entirely in the sugar/honey syrup, which is cooked with orange juice, orange peel, and a cinnamon stick, then strained and poured over the just-baked pastry. And let's not forget the cup of clarified butter. Who wants butterfat?

Marshmallows

2007-03-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a gourmet marshmallow site, and having an overabundance of gelatin from our upcoming Jello-themed party, Will and I decided to try making marshmallows from scratch. Super yummy, and turned out to be super easy. Heat up some sugar and corn syrup (we used honey) to soft ball stage, mix in gelatin and whip till frothy. Whip some egg whites and mix them in. Add some vanilla. Pour out onto powdered-sugared pan. Chill. Slice. The end! The honey substitution imparted a slight extra flavor, but not too strong.

I need to stop eating this much sugar all the time. Seriously.

Challah with Chocolate

2007-03-10T17:55:00.000-08:00

I wanted to get through a glut of bread flour and decided to make a simple challah recipe. Garnished with chocolate. I found a recipe for "Honey Challah" in Jeff Nathan's Adventures in Jewish Cooking, a book I got a while ago and somehow forgot about. Bad Ben. Anyway, the recipe turned out well. I haven't made bread in a while. It's super easy to do it with the stand mixer compared to kneading it by hand. I did one loaf (braid?) with the chocolate mixed right into the dough and another loaf with the chocolate just on top. Must use this book more often.

Ice Cream Crazy

2007-03-05T22:07:00.000-08:00

Acting on a tip, I picked up a fancy new self-freezing ice cream maker last week at a crazy discount. Of course, I couldn't decide on just one flavor to break it in with, so, you know, I made them all. Ended up having a bunch of friends over to share the bounty. Avocado, Dark Butterscotch, White Chocolate Ginger. Will made Goat's Milk Ice Cream with Fig and Chocolate and a couple sauces, Mexican Chocolate and Bourbon Caramel. Never anything plain.

I don't have pictures of every flavor, but you can see the new machine and a lot of the intermediate steps. I think the Avocado was technically a sherbet (no eggs). The Butterscotch was from Room for Dessert, but I used dark muscovado sugar instead of regular brown sugar. Really emphasized the brown sugar aspect of the butterscotch flavor. The white chocolate ginger recipe I just made up. Tweaked a basic vanilla recipe by adding melted white chocolate, a little zested ginger, and chopped candied ginger.

Having way more ice cream than I'll ever need to eat left over, I made everyone take a pint home. Now don't you wish you lived closer?

Lemon Buttermilk Sherbet

2007-02-08T23:20:00.000-08:00

With the buttermilk leftover from the spice cakes, I got to make another recipe I've been hanging onto for a few weeks... Lemon Buttermilk Sherbet from David Lebovitz's last email newsletter. It's hard to make something bad with buttermilk. This was a lot easier than the ice cream I've made before; just mixing everything together and freezing in the machine. With ice cream, you have to cook a custard, usually with eggs. I like how you can see the little bits of lemon zest.

Buttermilk Spice Cake

2007-02-08T23:15:00.000-08:00

Buttermilk Spice Cake from Dede Wilson's first wedding cake book. This is one of the test recipes for the wedding cake. I liked it. I probably would increase the quantities on the spices next time. The batter was really thick, but it rose to a very nice texture. I made two small cakes to freeze for a taste-testing later and used the extra batter to make cupcakes for a coworker's birthday. Did a quick cream-cheese frosting for the cupcakes.

Brown Sugar Cookies

2007-02-05T22:49:00.000-08:00

Got the new Cook's Illustrated last week and it had a great-sounding recipe for Brown Sugar Cookies. Who doesn't love brown sugar? And who doesn't love cookies? Will had just supplied me with some dark muscovado, a fancy high-end brown sugar grown on the island of Mauritius "on soil rich with volcanic ash." We decided to turn this recipe into an experiment to compare the dark muscovado to standard grocery store brown sugar. We split the recipe in two and did half with each kind. You can see in the pictures below that the dark brown sugar and the cookies made with it actually look pale next to the muscovado. The difference in the final product was substantial. The muscovado cookies had a lot more complexity of flavor; all kinds of weird spicy notes. The brown sugar cookies had a much simpler, sweet flavor. I much preferred the muscovado sugar cookies, but a lot of my friends thought the flavor was too much. I might try cutting it a bit with regular white sugar in the future, but I don't know if I can ever go back to regular brown sugar again.

Fruit Salad Sorbet

2007-01-10T21:57:00.000-08:00

A friend brought a ton of fruit salad to my New Year's Day potluck. Knowing I couldn't finish the leftovers before they went bad and not wanting them to go to waste, I made a sorbet. All the fruit, plus sugar, plus a little kirsch. What's it taste like? Kind of... everything.

Wedding Cake Time Again!

2007-01-09T16:23:00.001-08:00

Another sister of mine is getting married and has asked me to do the wedding cake. We haven't totally finalized the plans yet, but it's going to be something citrusy. I'll be doing some experimenting over the next few weeks with some different flavors and styles. Any volunteers for taste-testing?

Congrats, Dinah and Eli!

Honey Maple Carrot Cake

2007-01-06T01:15:00.000-08:00

Finally, Ben actually bakes a cake. It's been a little while. Doubled up on a recipe from Dede Wilson's first wedding cake book that I'd wanted to try for a while... Honey Maple Carrot Cake. A really interesting recipe in that it used honey and maple syrup instead of granulated sugar and vegetable oil instead of butter. Almost vegan, if not for the eggs. I've never made a carrot cake before. Never used to be a fan, but the concept has grown on me over the last few years. One of these was actually commissioned from me as a birthday cake. The other I did for a friend's "welcome home" party.

The buttercream was a little freaky too; made in the Italian meringue style, but with boiling honey and maple syrup instead of melted sugar. Lent a noticeable flavor to the finished product. You can see I tried a couple different decorating looks. My piping skills still need work. Visible in the last pic is my attempt to do a pattern with this mix-and-match cake comb device that was just a mess; the little plastic pieces kept falling apart in my hands. Probably the last we'll see of that.

Blueberry Buckle

2007-01-04T01:24:00.000-08:00

Got this recipe in a Cook's Illustrated a while ago and have been waiting for an occassion to try it out. I was going through the freezer recently and noticed that I had somehow accumulated a glut of frozen blueberries. Also, was going to a Hanukkah party, mentioned this recipe to the host, and he replied that he LOVED blueberries, so there you go. A buckle is basically fruit with just enough cake batter to hold it together. This batter turned out pretty thick and I had a hard time getting the blueberries evenly distributed, but no one complained.

Molasses Cookies

2007-01-02T01:11:00.000-08:00

I heard about this recipe in a story on NPR on my way into work one day. The author was talking about remembering her grandmother through her recipes. A great essay and a delicious recipe. I tried making these cookies in two slightly different ways. The first time, I followed the recipe very strictly. You can see in the pictures that the cookies really spread out a lot in the over, almost completely losing their shape. The second time, I replaced some of the all-purpose flour with high-gluten bread flour. This time, the cookies held their shape a lot better. Despite that, I think I actually preferred the original style. The flat cookies were so dense and chewy. Both tasted great; lots of cinnamon and cloves I brought them to two Thanksgiving parties and they went over well at both.

Lime and Black Pepper Ice Cream

2006-12-14T00:28:00.000-08:00

Almost caught up now... I combined a couple recipes from Chef, Interrupted to create Lime and Black Pepper Ice Cream. I had a bunch of limes and some cream left over from my housewarming party and I thought, hey, you never see lime ice cream. Lime sherbet, sure. I really enjoyed the black pepper ice cream from this past summer and wanted to try that again. I figured it would make a good base for another flavor.

I'd consider this project to have been semi-successful. I do think the flavors went well together; you get the acidic hit of lime right off the bat, with the pepper just at the end of a taste. Unfortunately, I think I went a little overboard on the lime. After a few bites, I'm done. I think with a little more pepper and a little less lime, it would be perfect. I'll be trying it again sometime.

Do you like the pint containers I found? I had to go all over town, and the Internet, looking for them. I think they're actually for takeout soup, but whatever. Also, I'm pretty proud of that microplane picture. I think I'm finally starting to use some color in my photos.

Cinnamon Sour Cream Muffins

2006-12-13T23:53:00.000-08:00

More backlog postings... this one actually took me a couple tries to remember what book it came from. Fortunately, I caught the corner of the book in the picture. Good ol' On Cooking, my culinary school textbook. Aw, I just noticed that a new edition is out. Does that mean my knowledge is officially out of date? I can't be taking out another student loan every time they update the book.

Anyway, I took a sour cream muffin recipe from the book and mixed up some cinnamon and sugar to swirl into the batter. In the picture, you can see all the assembly steps. A scoop of batter, a spoonful of cinnamon filling, another scoop of batter, and a sprinkling of streusel topping. Love the various-sized mechanical ice cream scoops for measuring out batter, btw. Highly recommended.

Ginger-Lime and Chocolate-Peanut Butter cupcakes

2006-12-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

Second backlog posting... my housewarming party, featuring ginger-lime cupcakes and chocolate peanut butter cupcakes. The cupcake recipes are basic yellow cake and chocolate recipes from Cook's Illustrated magazine. They worked out really well, so I wrote them down and taped them to the inside of the baking cupboard in my new kitchen. I figure anytime I need cupcakes I'll have a basic recipe to consult and tweak. The yellow cupcakes were augmented with a Ginger Lime Cream Cheese frosting from the very fun Cupcake Bakeshop blog. Tons of great ideas and recipes there, if you're ever in the mood to make something unusual. The chocolate cupcakes got a dollop of peanut butter swirled into the batter of each one and were topped with a basic cream cheese frosting with just a bit of chocolate extract. In the pictures, you can see them go from ingredients, to freezer storage, to final serving in my new cupcake tower on my new dining room table in my new place. I made about 6 dozen cupackes for the party, which turned out to be way overkill. I still have a few left in my freezer, two months after the fact.

Focaccia with Blue Cheese, Honey, and Figs

2006-11-26T21:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, first backlog posting... Focaccia with Blue Cheese, Honey, and Figs from www.mattbites.com. Took me forever to find figs, probably because this was right around the end of the fig season. I tried half a dozen grocery stores before I finally found some at a gourmet market in La Jolla. Of course.

I gotta admit, even though figs were kind of the point of this recipe, they were probably my least favorite part. Maybe it was because it was the end of the fig season and they were past their prime. Or maybe I'm just not a big fresh fig person. Who knows? At least I still love the Newtons. The focaccia itself... great. The combination of honey and blue cheese... also great. Eating the whole thing in 48 hours... maybe a little much.

Instant Espresso

2006-11-19T23:44:00.000-08:00

So, I finally finally found a place to buy instant espresso. A whole bunch of my dessert cookbooks call for it, but I haven't been able to find it at a grocery store anywhere. I've even searched the fancy yuppie stores and a bunch of ethnic markets. I finally found it today at a little Italian import place in San Diego's Little Italy neighborhood. Seriously, I've been looking for this stuff for years.

I know, I know... I've been really bad about updating the blog lately. I actually have had several new baking projects, but with moving into and setting up my new place, I just haven't had the time to really sit down and write about them. I promise to catch up on the backlog shortly, so stay tuned!

And the inaugural dish for my new kitchen is...

2006-09-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

...Ultimate Oatmeal Cookies, from the May/June 2005 issue of Cook's Illustrated. I needed something quick to bring for dessert at a chorus gathering and this recipe fit the bill. This was my first baking project in the new kitchen, and it was great. An oven large enough to bake the entire batch of cookies at once, with a glass door to check their progress and all kinds of fancy digital readouts. I used an ice cream scoop to measure out the cookie dough and these came out as some of the most uniform-looking desserts I've put together. For this recipe, "Ultimate" means chocolate chunks, raisins, and walnuts. Mine was the only dessert at the party to completely run out, so... success.

What should I try in the new kitchen next?

Tomato Sorbet

2006-09-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

The last thing I'll ever make in my old kitchen. Besides toast. Yes, you read that right, tomato sorbet. Another one of those things that I just had to try after hearing about it. I got the recipe from MattBites.com, blog of an awesome food photographer. Okay, so it was supposed to be heirloom tomatoes. I forgot to go to the farmer's market, ok? I did use a few tomatoes fresh from my parent's garden. Truth be told, I wasn't super into this dish. I think the real heirloom tomatoes would have helped the flavor a lot, as would using less vinegar. It was really vinegary. Like, sweet-and-sour-sauce sorbet. I'll try it again with a few tweaks. In my amazing new kitchen! Pics coming soon.

My New Kitchen - almost ready!

2006-08-24T11:07:00.000-07:00

Cocoa-Chocolate Chip Pillows

2006-08-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

Finally, the weather is not insanely hot and I can bake again. Going to a little wine, cheese, movie thing tonight. Asked to bring something chocolate. Making Cocoa-Chocolate Chip Pillows from Lisa Yockelson's Baking by Flavor, mainly because I had all the ingredients on hand already. Oh, except for chocolate chips. I used white chocolate chips. Interesting thing about these cookies... no eggs. Lots of butter though, so not quite vegan. In case you were wondering.

My New Kitchen?

2006-07-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

Stay tuned...

Black Pepper Ice Cream

2006-06-25T22:48:00.000-07:00

I'd found a reference to this online and just had to see what it tasted like. After a little Googling, I discovered that I already owned a recipe for black pepper ice cream in a new book I'd been meaning to try out... Chef, Interrupted by Melissa Clark. This particular recipe was adapted from one by Karen Barker of Magnolia Grill.

Now, I know you're thinking "pepper... ice cream... what?" I didn't really know what to expect either, but it was good. Came out as basically a rich vanilla ice cream, nothing out of the ordinary, and then just as you're finishing a bite and the ice cream has melted in your mouth, it surprises you with this pepper kick. Honestly, I think I would have enjoyed it with even more of a pepper flavor, and I already increased the amount a bit. I brought this to a party, so a lot of people got to try the experiment.

Candied Kumquats

2006-06-25T22:38:00.000-07:00

Another Room for Dessert recipe. Okay, so it's just fruit cooked in sugar. It's good. Weird to be able to eat the entire fruit; like popping an entire tiny orange into your mouth. Really sweet from the candying, but still really tart. Good stuff, and very easy to make, although you do need a candy thermometer to keep an eye on the temperature.

Apple Brown Betty

2006-05-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

Memorial day potluck... Apple Brown Betty. The recipe for this was from a Cook's Illustrated issue I got about two years ago and I just now got to make it. Not counting the prep time for chopping and whatnot, this dish was pretty quick and simple to make. First, toasting breadcrumbs, butter, and brown sugar on the stove. Then, cooking butter, chopped apples, more brown sugar, and a bit of cinnamon and ginger, reusing the same pan. At the very end, adding some apple cider and lemon juice, tossing in half of the breadcrumbs, and garnishing with the rest. Basically an apple pie casserole.

Strawberry Cream Cake

2006-05-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

My siblings and I put together a little parade of desserts for Mother's Day and this was my contribution... a Strawberry Cream Cake, recipe courtesy of Cook's Illustrated magazine. Layers of vanilla sponge cake filled with a chopped strawberry mixture and a really rich whipped cream and cream cheese frosting. Good stuff, and photogenic.

Double Chocolate Espresso and Cashew Cookies

2006-05-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

For shipment to various friends around the country, I made a double batch of Double Chocolate Espresso and Cashew Cookies. Cocoa and instant coffee (I can't find powdered espresso anywhere) in the dough, with chocolate chips and chopped, toasted cashews mixed in. I know not absolutely everyone likes chocolate, but it's usually a fairly safe bet. Also made a few regular chocolate chip cookies. Both recipes were from The Great Book of Chocolate. Hope everyone enjoys them.

Fresh Ginger Cake

2006-05-04T23:15:00.000-07:00

Tonight I made the Fresh Ginger Cake from Room for Dessert. Why? Because I just needed to bake something tonight. I was starting to think my whole kitchen might start to atrophy. David Lebovitz extols this recipe in his book, so I'm really looking forward to trying it tomorrow. I'm bringing it in to work, so coworkers... start your engines.

Caramelized Matzoh Crunch with Chocolate

2006-04-30T01:28:00.000-07:00

To provide birthday and housewarming gifts, and to use up some leftover Passover matzah, I made Caramelized Matzoh Crunch with Chocolate from David Lebovitz's blog. Basically toffee over matzah, with chocolate and toasted almond layers on top. Way yummier than just plain matzah, if I do say so myself. A giant pile of sugar and butter is hard to beat, though.

Orange Cupcakes with Mocha Ganache

2006-03-22T22:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I made Orange Cupcakes with Mocha Ganache from recipes in Dede Wilson's Wedding Cakes You Can Make. I added the orange zest at the wrong step, so I think the flavor was not quite as potent as it could have been, but I did brush the cupcakes with simple syrup leftover from candying the citrons a few weeks ago. Despite that, I got some comments at chorus tonight that the cupcakes were dry. On my way home, I bought a little plastic syringe thingy and used it to inject some of the remaining cupcakes with more of the sugar syrup to re-moisten them. After a couple, though, I decided to leave my poor doped-up cupcakes well enough alone. We'll see if anyone at work tomorrow can distinguish the syruped cupcakes from the dry. On top of the cupcakes is a ganache made from bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, and a little coffee.

Chouquettes

2006-03-12T22:20:00.000-08:00

Made chouquettes, little mini creamless cream-puffs. Took a couple tries to get the time/temperature right. I substituted maple sugar for the chunky sugar crystals in the recipe. Chocolate chips on some.

Calas

2006-02-27T21:10:00.000-08:00

Did a Mardi Gras-themed dinner last night with JP. Got to break out my new New Orleans cookbook (thanks Aimee and Craig!) for the first time. Tough to kosherize those entrees, but the desserts were no problem. Pictured here are calas, fried doughy balls of rice, rolled in cinammon and sugar. Interesting because there's yeast and flour in the batter, like a bread, but also mashed up cooked long-grain rice. The recipe recommended serving them with cane sugar, which I don't even know how to find around here. Honey turned out to be a good substitute. Maple syrup, not quite as much.

Lemon-Rosemary and Lime-Mint Sorbet & Martinis

2006-02-26T22:18:00.000-08:00

At my sister's birthday dinner a couple weeks ago, one of her roommates made these awesome lemon-rosemary martinis. I asked for the how-to and was off to the market the next morning to buy lemons and fresh rosemary. The process is really interesting. You heat up sugar and water and then steep the herbs in the liquid, like making a tea. Then you strain it out, mix in the lemon juice, cool it, and finally freeze it in an ice cream maker to produce a sorbet. To serve, put a scoop of sorbet into a martini glass and pour vodka over it. After a couple minutes, the sorbet starts to dissolve and the rosemary scent starts to become more and more pronounced. Delicious. I did a lime/mint version as well, although the flavor of that came out more subdued.

Date-Filled Citron Shortbread Cookies

2006-02-17T00:13:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I worked on a revision of the cookies I made back in December for the business project. This time, I used the candied citron, instead of orange and lemon, to make the recipe even more applicable to the holiday theme. I also punched up the date filling a bit, increasing the amount of lemon juice and adding lemon zest and a pinch of salt. I'm pretty happy with the date filling and the new flavor of the cookies, but one thing I didn't like was that the shortbread didn't stay crispy for very long. I may play around with a different style of cookie for the sandwich.

Chocolate Pudding

2006-02-11T18:05:00.000-08:00

I needed to use up the rest of the milk and cream that I bought on Monday to make the ice cream, so I found a recipe for chocolate pudding in David Lebovits' The Great Book of Chocolate. I did a little tweaking of the recipe. First doubled it to use up all the milk & cream, although the recipe only called for regular milk. Instead of using 2 tsp chocolate extract or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, I doubled it by using one of each. Also replaced some of the unsweetened chocolate with bittersweet and reduced the amount of sugar. And used some egg yolks I had previously frozen, rather than crack fresh eggs. Ugh, it's a wonder it came out at all. But it did, and it's delicious. Way more chocolately than that stuff from a box.

Roquefort and Honey Ice Cream

2006-02-07T08:04:00.000-08:00

Last night I made the Roquefort and Honey Ice Cream from David Lebovitz's recent blog entry. Reading about it, it just struck me as such a bizarre combination of flavors that I had to try it. And bizarre is pretty much how it turned out. My brain was like, "mmm, ice cream.... sweet... delicious... uh, salty? Smelly?" The roquefort by itself was excellent. I don't think I'd ever tried it before. It's a sheep's milk blue cheese that can only be made in particular caves in France. Very strong flavor, but appealing, at least to me. At $27/lb, it didn't make for the cheapest pint of ice cream ever, but it was well worth the experiment. I need to try it again later (and try to come up with something that it would go well with) before I make any real judgement.

Sour Cream Blueberry Muffins

2006-01-30T19:21:00.000-08:00

I made these blueberry muffins for the chorus new-members mixer. And partly to use up some sour cream that was taking up space in the fridge. The recipe is from a new book I just got for the holidays (thanks, JP!), Baking by Flavor by Lisa Yockelson. The recipe selection looks great and this recipe in particular was good, but something about the tone of the writing struck me as a little off. Dunno. I'll pick it up again later and try something else.

I also used this recipe as an excuse to try out my new silicone mini-muffin pans. I've never used silicone pans before (or made mini muffins). They work about as you'd expect. The muffins didn't brown on the outside as much as in a regular pan, but they popped right out without any sort of butter or nonstick spray, and cleanup was super easy. This recipe might not have been the best one to try to miniaturize. The individual blueberries looked huge in those little cups. You really could only fit a couple in each muffin. Also, the batter was pretty thick and difficult to measure evenly into such small ammounts. I also made a few regular-sized muffins. In the book, the recipe actually calls for extra-large muffin tins.

Buttermilk Pumpkin Spice Cake

2006-01-23T23:05:00.000-08:00

Searching for a recipe to use up some buttermilk (from the lemon bundt cake) and some pumpkin (had frozen and then thawed it. didn't want to refreeze), I found a Buttermilk Pumpkin Spice Cake recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. My parents got me this book years ago and it's favorite "old standby" recipe source. It's got a solid recipe for just about every American standard. Once, I found the edition from the year I was born and it was a trip. Hello, '70s earth tones!

Anyway, the spice cake... perfectly good. But what was interesting was the frosting, a browned butter and powdered sugar mixture. My friend Will brought over a block of creme fraiche caramel he had made and we mixed it right into the frosting. You can see pictures of us melting and blending the caramel below. Man, did that change everything. Of course, all of the comments I got from people who tried the cake were about the frosting. Oh, was there cake in there too?

Candied Citron

2006-01-22T11:09:00.000-08:00

Lemon Bundt Cake

2006-01-21T11:07:00.000-08:00

I signed up to bring dessert to chorus rehearsal this week and decided to make the Lemon Bundt Cake recipe from a recent issue of Cook's Illustrated. Very lemony, although a little denser than I'm used to. Almost like a pound cake. Anyway, no one complained. Had a little bit of a panic when I ran out of powdered sugar making the icing. The recipe calls for you to pour on the icing in specific timed intervals and I didn't want to run out to the store and leave the cake to burn in the oven. I took the cake out of the oven, drove the 4 blocks to the nearest grocery and made it back only 90 seconds late. Cake drama.

Cocoa Butter Pastry Experiment

2006-01-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

Downtown Bakery Brownies and Blue Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies

2006-01-01T18:01:00.000-08:00

When my friends Joe and Curtis (miss you guys!) were getting ready to move to Colorado, they asked for "something chocolate" for the road. I pulled out The Great Book of Chocolate and settled on recipes for Downtown Bakery Brownies and Blue Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies. Chocolate chip cookies for their homey comfort and the brownies for their bittersweet chocolate ganache-covered dark chocolate brownie chocolatiness. Did I mention they have chocolate? Of course, I had to sample everything for quality-control purposes. My camera ran out of batteries right at the end, so that last faded picture is from my cell phone. Nifty bakery box, huh? I bought some more in anticipation of belated holiday baked-good gifts.

Orange-Lemon Shortbread Cookies with Date and Cranberry Fillings and Honey-Caramel Apples

2005-12-31T10:23:00.000-08:00

I'm working with two of my sisters on a Kosher-themed food business concept. Right now we're still in an early, early planning stage and as part of that, we're each experimenting with some recipes. These are my first trials.

First up, a totally invented recipe for a honey-flavored caramel apple, inspired by the Rosh Hashanah custom of eating apples with honey. I found some neat miniature apples at Whole Foods and caramelized two parts sugar and one part honey. I know a real caramel would have butter or cream or some sort of dairy, but I was hoping to avoid using any to extend the shelf life. Maybe that's not necessary, though. An apple's only going to be good for so long by itself, anyway. So, I definitely cooked the sugar mixture too long. I was keeping an eye on the thermometer, but I think that honey caramelizes at a lower temperature than regular sugar, so I may have to adjust for that on the next trial. The resulting caramel coating was way way too tough to bite into. Tooth-pulling tough. Tasted like honey, though, so a minor success there. Also, next time I will let them cool completely before wrapping in wax paper. Little tough to remove on these.

Next, I put together an orange-lemon shortbread cookie with date filling, inspired by the lulav and etrog of the holiday Sukkot. The lulav is made of leaves from a date palm and the etrog is a citron, a citrus fruit only somewhat resembling an orange or lemon. Eventually, I would like to try using actual candied citron in the recipe, but I had the orange and lemon on hand. The cookie was based on the Poppy Seed-Orange Cookies from Room for Dessert. The date filling I made up after looking through a few recipes for date jams and spreads. It's basically dates, sugar, lemon juice, and almonds. It was alright, but definitely needed a little more zing. Maybe next time I'll include some of the lemon zest. I ran out of the date filling before the cookies, so I took some leftover Thanksgiving-style cranberry sauce and cooked it with some more sugar and a cornstarch slurry to thicken it and used it to fill the remaining cookies.

Ginger Snaps and Chocolate Buttercrunch Toffee

2005-12-20T17:30:00.000-08:00

For today's holiday party at work, I made ginger snaps from Room for Dessert and Chocolate Buttercrunch Toffee from David Lebovitz's class last week. The ginger snaps had a great spicy bite, with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and black pepper. The toffee was interesting because you have to heat the sugar with butter to 300 degrees F, the "hard crack" stage. Once the toffee gets to that stage, you pour it over chopped toasted nuts and then cover it with chocolate chips, which melt from the heat of the toffee. More nuts (I went with hazelnuts for this batch), and voila. Thanks to my friend Alex for helping out with the pictures and grinding the black pepper.

Met the Chef

2005-12-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

Last night I attended David Lebovitz's Chocolate Holiday Treats class at Sur La Table in Carlsbad. How cool to finally meet one of my favorite cookbook authors!? He was very nice and charming and signed my book and we browsed the slightly disappointing sale rack together. He even plugged my website during class. Yes, now I am known to dozens. And now, I must go and buy one of every tool and ingredient that store sells, add a room onto my apartment to store it all, and bake until I drop. Who's hungry?

Thanksgiving

2005-12-05T22:02:00.000-08:00

Not strictly a baking project, but I put together a little Thanksgiving dinner this year for myself and some local friends. It was a potluck, so I didn't have to spend a week in the kitchen getting ready. I made corn bread muffins, turkey (just breasts), and the previous post's pumpkin souffles for dessert. I think the souffles came out even better this time than the first. They definitely rose another quarter inch or so. Everyone brought something fun to eat or drink and we had a great time just sitting around and chatting for hours around my little coffee table. Here's a picture of the spread:

Ben's Pumpkin Souffle Recipe

2005-11-22T19:54:00.000-08:00

Pumpkin Souffle

- serves 6-7

Ingredients:
6 eggs, separated
2 oz plus 1 oz sugar
3 oz all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cream (whole milk or half-and-half is probably ok here)
3/4 cup pumpkin (I use canned)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
pinch of cream of tartar
melted butter and sugar to line ramekins
powdered sugar for decoration
6 or 7 ramekins

Pumpkin Base:
- warm cream and pumpkin in a saucepan
- in a medium bowl, whisk 2oz sugar into yolks. whisk in flour, then warmed liquid mixture
- return to saucepan. cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. do not boil
- remove from heat and stir in cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves
- cover with plastic wrap
- let cool to room temp or refrigerate for later and bring to room temp before using

Souffle:
-preheat oven to 425 degrees F
- coat inside of ramekins with melted butter, then sugar
- in a large bowl, whip egg whites to stiff peaks, adding 1 oz sugar and cream of tartar partway through
- gently fold whites into base
- spoon mixture into ramekins
- place on baking sheet in oven
- bake ~13 minutes, until edges appear dry; do not touch
- sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve immediately
- resist the urge to eat them all yourself. trust me.

Pumpkin Souffle

2005-11-14T22:01:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to think of something fun to make for Thanksgiving. Something a little fancier than the usual pumpkin pie, but not too fancy. I do love pumpkin pie. I've also been wanting to try out a souffle for a while, so to knock two things off my list at once, I decided to come up with a pumpkin souffle recipe. That's right, I made up a recipe. Well, okay, I started with a chocolate souffle recipe from my culinary school textbook, but I totally reworked it, mostly. I did a trial run tonight because I didn't want Thanksgiving to come around and my recipe to turn out to be disgusting at the last minute, seeing how I basically made it up. Well, it turned out pretty freakin' good. Actually, I couldn't find anyone at the last minute to help me eat them, so... I kinda had five at once. What? Souffles don't keep. Ask anyone! I would have finished them off, too, but ugh... just too much. Take my advice, stop at three.

If there's any interest, I can post the recipe.

UPDATE: Recipe is now available.

Return of the Wedding Cake - Part 2

2005-11-12T16:08:00.000-08:00

Spent Thursday night baking, slicing, filling, and frosting the anniversary cake. Did the final bit of decoration on Friday while the happy couple looked the other way. Turned out just as planned, this being about the fourth time I've made that particular cake. Unfortunately, my camera didn't make it all the way through the process, but I snapped a quick cameraphone shot of the final product.

Return of the Wedding Cake

2005-11-08T23:39:00.000-08:00

Remember the wedding cake I did last November? Well, my sister and brother-in-law's first anniversary is coming up and I promised them I would recreate the top tier of their wedding cake. There's that whole tradition of saving the top of the wedding cake in your freezer to eat on your anniversary, but gross. Year-old cake? Not that I don't have older things in my freezer, but I probably won't end up actually eating any of them.

So, tonight I made a fresh batch of the raspberry-blackberry curd. Last night I did chocolate rose leaves. We'll see if the flowers from last Sunday's farmer's market can make it until the weekend. I'm being extra-careful with them. Thursday I'll bake the cakes, mix up the ganache frosting, and assemble.

Cherry Clafoutis

2005-10-24T22:21:00.000-07:00

Made Cherry Clafoutis from Michel Roux's Eggs with my pastry friend Will. I didn't take any picures until afterwards, but it was surprisingly straightforward... stir, pour, bake. Hard to describe, though. Not quite a cake. Not quite a tart. Maybe a sweet, fluffy, waffley, quichey kinda thing. I'd never had one before.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Coffee Meringue

2005-10-12T23:41:00.000-07:00

Had the urge to make cupcakes for a little while now, so I used my section's turn to bring snacks to chorus tonight as an excuse to make some. I used the Essential Chocolate Cake Recipe from Dede Wilson's Wedding Cakes You Can Make; basically the same recipe I used for the wedding cake last year. I also wanted to try using a meringue instead of a buttercream as the frosting. I used an italian buttercream recipe, melted sugar poured into whipped egg whites, and just left out the butter. Also added some instant coffee for a flavor I thought would complement the chocolate cake well. The meringue looked really good piped into a swirl on the cupcakes. I used my little culinary torch to toast the outside a bit, like you'd see on a lemon meringue pie. After 24 cupcakes, I still had quite a bit of meringue left, so I piped it into swirls on a baking sheet and popped it into the oven to make meringue cookies. Crispy.

Teiglach

2005-10-03T23:47:00.000-07:00

For a Rosh Hashanah dinner tonight I made teiglach, a traditional Lithuanian Jewish dessert. It's basically bits of dough cooked in boiling honey with ginger and lemon zest, then tossed with walnuts. When I called them to ask about teiglach, my family knew exactly what I was talking about, but I can't recall ever having actually eaten it myself. Thus, I am still not sure whether it turned out like it's supposed to or not. It looks pretty. The bread bits are... a little tougher than I would have liked. Maybe that's the intent. Let's assume so.

The recipe I used was from Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food.

Honey-Walnut Tart

2005-09-26T21:29:00.000-07:00

Got the latest Bon Appetit magazine last week and for some reason the Honey-Walnut Tart recipe by Susan Loomis looked really really good. I knew I had to make it pretty quickly or it would end up in that giant magazine backlog pile. Since I was driving up to The OC this weekend to see my parents and youngest sister, I brought the ingredients with me and made it up there. I even got to use the orange peel I'd candied a few months back. The filling for the tart is mostly walnuts and brown sugar, with some honey, orange and lemon zest, candied orange peel, and eggs to give it some substance, displayed all nice in my parents' wedding china.. One ingredient that I looked everywhere for but couldn't track down was orange-flower water. Hopefully, the three other citrus ingredients could handle that aspect of the flavor by themselves.

So, I made the tart Friday night with my sister. It smelled great. It looked totally cool and rustic with the folded over crust, which I am definitely using again. It could cool and make a great breakfast for the next morning. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that neither of my parents particularly likes walnuts. And my dad's folks are allergic. Well, I liked it. And my mom's mom apparently loves that sort of thing, so I took her about half of it. Thanks, Grandma! If you can get your hands on all the ingredients, this is a pretty easy one to make. Mix together flour, water, and butter and roll out the crust. Toss together the filling. Fold, bake, eat.

Quince Apple Candy

2005-09-14T22:37:00.000-07:00

Last weekend at the local Farmer's Market I saw a guy selling quince, which I've neither seen nor tasted before, so I bought one. Fifty cents, and he threw in a couple random citrus fruits for good measure. I had thought that quince was a kind of citrus, but it turns out it's related to pears and apples. It looks like kind of a squat pear, but it has a much tougher flesh. I knew I had seen a recipe with quince in Room for Dessert. When I checked it out at home, the recipe was for Quince Paste, which I used to make a candy.

Now, the recipe called for four quinces and I had only bought one. I did have an extra apple in the fridge, which is related to the quince, and which the recipe said you could substitute. So, rather than quartering the recipe, I added in the apple and halved the recipe. I have to admit, I made a quite a few other adjustments as well. The recipe calls for half of a lemon, which I didn't have handy, so I used half of a lime. After simmering the fruit for a while, you're supposed to press it through a sieve, which I had trouble with, so I used my trusty hand blender. Worked great. I also used a silicone baking sheet to keep the paste from sticking to the tray while it cooled. Last step, chopping into squares and tossing in sugar.

The candy tastes basically like apples and has kind of an extra soft gummy bear texture. Pectin? I would like to try it sometime with just quince, to see the flavor difference. I'm bringing it into work, otherwise I would eat it all, as usual.

White Chocolate Lime Cake Pictures

2005-09-09T07:42:00.000-07:00

Here are the pictures for the white chocolate cake with lime. Ingredients, mixing, baking, decorating, serving. Of course, as soon as I'd brought the cake into work the next day, I remembered the whole white-chocolate-tile-mosaic decorating thing I wanted to try out, inspired by my cousin's wedding cake. No wonder I had two pounds of white chocolate left over. Where was my head that night? I even remember thinking, "Gosh this cake looks so plain. I'd better pipe a trim or something to liven it up." Well, that'll just be something for everyone to look forward to on the next cake.

Also, a quick update on my homegrown bread yeast starter... I'm not sure what went wrong, but somewhere in the refrigeration and feeding process, I think I killed it. It hardly seemed to be growing at all after I took it out of the fridge. Feeding it with extra flour and even some honey (sugar) didn't help. I started the Kalamata Olive Bread recipe anyway, but after about 36 hours of proofing time with no rise in sight, I finally let it go. I'll do a fresh starter this weekend and try the bread again soon.

White Chocolate Lime Cake

2005-09-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I finished the cake last night. I used the white chocolate cake recipe from The Wedding Cake Book. You actually pour melted white chocolate (the real kind, not the cheap vegetable oil kind) into the cake batter. Made two 8-inch cakes and cut them in half for a total of four layers. In-between the layers, I used the lime curd from a few days ago. For the outside, I blended together the plain buttercream and some lime curd. Even though I followed the directions in the book, the blending process was causing the buttercream to separate again. I wasn't sure if the torch trick I used making the plain buttercream would work again, but I tried it and it seemed to do the job. That was a relief. I'm not sure why the buttercream is so sensitive.

Anyway, I finished frosting the cake (two coats) and it looked really plain, so I piped a little spiraly trim pattern around the top edge, reminding me that my piping skills need some practice. I'll garnish it with a lime wedge or two before serving. I've got some pictures ready, but I want to take some more of the cake after it's sliced, so you can see the layers. I'm bringing the cake into work today, so I'll take some pictures at lunchtime and post them tonight or tomorrow. If you're someone who got to try it, write a comment and let me know what you think of the flavor combination. Personally, I love lime, but it's not something you see in a cake too often. Enjoy!

Lime Curd

2005-08-31T23:11:00.000-07:00

Did another component of the upcoming cake tonight... lime curd. Basically, I took Dede Wilson's Lemon Curd recipe and substituted limes. Tastes great, but I was hoping for more dramatically green color. Taste is key, though.

In the pictures, you can see the various phases of ingredients, mixing over a double boiler, stirring forever, and finally the curd, with visible flecks of micro-plane zested rind.

Italian Buttercream

2005-08-31T07:28:00.000-07:00

I had a great idea for a cake to make based on some limes I found at the farmer's market last week. Last night I worked on the first step, buttercream frosting. I used the Italian Buttercream recipe from The Wedding Cake Book. I last used this recipe way back last year when I was making sample cakes for my sister's wedding. Actually, most of the components for this cake will be based on recipes from this book.

In the pictures you can see the ingredients set-up: eggs (just the whites), water, sugar, lots of butter, and cream of tartar. Next, you see me boiling the liquified sugar (up to, but not past 250 degrees F) and whipping the egg whites. After finishing it off with the 6 sticks of butter, the frosting unfortunately broke, meaning the emulsion of its various components separated. Hey, it happens, sometimes. You can see the next-to-last picture where the buttercream's all lumpy and weird. Fortunately I managed to re-emulsify it with a little trick where you wave a culinary torch around the outside of the metal bowl while it continues to mix. Voila... smooth, delicious, insanely rich buttercream.

Yeast Starter - part 3

2005-08-23T22:43:00.000-07:00

Sure enough, when I got home from work today, the starter had just started to overflow the new larger bowl. Looking at the bread recipes again, I realized that with all the rising the dough was scheduled for, it would take a minimum of 6 hours to produce anything. Even if I started right away, things would be going until past midnight. I decided the bread baking would have to wait for a free weekend day. This meant that the yeast starter would have to be put on ice. I poured a good chunk of the starter into a fresh smaller glass bowl, covered it up, and popped it in the fridge. The plan is to resuscitate it with more water and flour about a day before I decide to bake the bread. I'll be out of town this weekend, so I'm shooting for the weekend after.

Below you can see a picture of the starter when I got up this morning, expanded after its feeding last night. Then a picture of the starter transferred into the larger bowl, with the water and flour for the second feeding sitting next to it. Then a shot of the starter a few minutes later after everything's been mixed in. Finally, you can see what I found when I got home today, with the starter actually stretching out the plastic wrap covering the bowl. Scary.

Yeast Starter - part 2

2005-08-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

When I checked on the yeast starter this morning it had doubled in size, nearly filling up the bowl. I transferred it to a larger bowl and fed it again, according to the instructions. Now I'm worried that it will overflow the new bowl. I put it in the largest glass (non-reactive) container I own, but it's only about twice the volume of the first one. It will just have to do. The yeast should be all set to be made into bread by tonight, if I have time. I also did some Googling for directions on keeping the yeast alive indefinitely. You can keep it in the fridge and just take it out once a week for a feeding. It'll be my new pet! My smelly bowl of microbial goo pet. And you all will eat the bread I make and love it.

Natural Yeast Starter

2005-08-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

A while ago I found a couple recipes online from Bread and Cie, an amazing bakery only three blocks from my apartment. Of course, I had to try them out, but these are classy bread recipes. No powdered instant yeast for them. They want you to grow your own living yeast from scratch. Helpfully, a recipe for culturing yeast is provided, but it takes almost a week to complete and I've just now managed to get it all together. I'm about halfway through the process right now, so I wanted to post some pictures. I wish I'd remembered to take a picture before I'd thrown away the grapes (see recipe), but here's a picture of the yeast after it's been percolating for four days, and a second picture a few minutes later after I've given it its first feeding of flour and water. Tomorrow morning I'll transfer it to a larger bowl and feed it again. By tomorrow night, it should be big and bubbly enough to be turned into either Caramelized Onion Bread or Kalamata Olive Bread. Yum!

Chocolate Orbit Cake

2005-08-15T00:17:00.000-07:00

Did the [flourless] Chocolate Orbit Cake from Room for Dessert today. Had some friends over tonight and it disappeared pretty quickly. Short list of ingredients on this one: eggs, sugar, chocolate, butter. Melt, mix, bake in water bath... chocolate cake! No time-consuming flour-related steps to slow things down. I accidentally bought chocolate with almonds in it, but everything seemed to mix up okay anyway. Wasn't quite sure what the texture would come out like, and it seemed a little soft even though I left it in slightly longer than the recommended time, but I had to get it out of the oven or be late for dinner. Even after it cooled, the cake was still a little soft, but... maybe that's how it was supposed to be. I assume. Oh, AND, for my birthday, my friend Marlon got me the more recent David Lebovitz cookbook, The Great Book of Chocolate. I think that was a hint. Bound to get some good tips out of there, so very cool.

Butterscotch Pudding

2005-07-25T23:46:00.000-07:00

Saw a butterscotch pudding recipe recently on David Lebovitz's blog and really wanted to try it. I've only ever made the kind that comes in a box from Jello. Making it from scratch was not overly complicated and it tasted really good. I still don't totally get where the butterscotch flavor comes from. One minute it's milk and brown sugar and eggs, the next minute it's sweet delicious butterscotchiness. Okay, there were a few other ingredients... melted butter, vanilla, salt, dark rum. I had to make a special trip for one of those little airline bottles of rum. I only needed two teaspoons for the recipe. This is an easy one to try at home that doesn't require any special equipment.

Pumpkin Pie

2005-07-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

Made pumpkin pie for a potluck dinner last night (theme: bring your Mom's favorite recipe). It came out fine, but unfortunately about half of the party guests brought a dessert, so there was a lot of competition. Still, about half the pie went, and now I have leftovers. I found it paired especially well with one of the party hosts' sour cream cheese cake. Yes, I got the recipe.

Cantaloupe Sorbet

2005-07-20T01:06:00.000-07:00

This weekend my mom gave me a not-quite-ripe cantaloupe, and when I walked into my apartment after work today, I could smell that it was really really ready. Since I wasn't about to eat the whole thing myself, I started browsing around for something I could make with it. You don't really think of cantaloupe being made into things, other than maybe a fruit salad. Looking through Room for Dessert, it struck me that the texture of a cantaloupe was similar to that of a mango or a peach, for which several frozen sorbet recipes were available. I ended up using David Lebovitz's White Nectarine Sorbet recipe as a base. The process is basically to simmer the fruit for a bit to soften it, add water and sugar and a splash of kirsch (cherry liquor), puree it in a blender, chill, and freeze the liquid in an ice cream maker. Pretty straightforward, and at least the liquid version tastes pretty good. I haven't tried the final frosty product yet; it needs a bit more time in the freezer to finish up.

Maple Sugar Pie, mini Blueberry Pie

2005-07-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

For Alicia's going-away a couple weeks ago, I baked, at her request, a maple sugar pie. Apparently, there is such a thing as maple sugar, related to maple syrup, but granular, like regular sugar. And you can make a pie out of it. One of Alicia's friends' moms had made such a pie for her years back and we were going to try and reproduce that experience. After some online searching (who knows what recipe Alicia's friend's mom used), we settled on this recipe from Farm Credit Canada. I mean, they sure sound official, right? The recipe called for authentic maple syrup and maple sugar, which I tracked down at Whole Foods. Organic, even. And Canadian. Well, the sugar. The syrup was from Vermont. Still organic.

I used my Mom's pumpkin pie crust recipe, which seemed more along the lines of what Alicia remembered than the flaky crust from last month's strawberry pies. It's a nicely straightforward liquid vegetable oil-based crust. The filling recipe worked out to be a layer of mostly syrup topped by a layer of sugar, butter, and flour. So, yeah, this pie is about 50% sugar by mass. Smelled so good while it was baking. Of course, come serving time, it turns out not to be the pie on which Alicia had reminisced at all. At least, the consistency was all wrong. Tasty though, if you can tolerate a gooey, pie-slice-sized hunk of candy.

To round out the evening with something a little less experimental, I used the frozen leftover pie crust from the strawberry pies and some frozen blueberries I had left over from... I don't even remember, probably some blueberry muffins from who knows when... to make a cute mini blueberry pie. Yummy, but almost savory next to the sugar pie.

Sugar.

Open-Faced Double Strawberry Pie

2005-06-09T23:09:00.000-07:00

I know I've been talking about it for like two weeks, but I finally found the time to make that strawberry pie tonight. It's the Open-Faced Double Strawberry Pie from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie and Pastry Bible. Started with the basic pie dough that I made a week or so ago and froze. Even made a little border around the edge. Next, a layer of blended cream cheese, sour cream, and white chocolate. Then, a layer of sweetened, cooked strawberries. Finally, topped with halved strawberries and a grape (I couldn't find currant) jelly glaze. The big one is for a barbecue tomorrow night. The little one is promised to Alicia. I told you I didn't forget, Alicia!

Summer Pudding

2005-06-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

"Summer Pudding" from Room for Dessert. I made it for JP's birthday cake after dismissing the world's largest jelly donut as impractical. Consists of layers of white bread filled with raspberries and blackberries cooked with sugar. The liquid from the berries soaks through the bread overnight in the fridge, producing this giant red cake mass thing. Tasted yummy.

Basic Flakey Pie Crust

2005-05-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Hadn't made a pie in a while; thought I'd give it a go. Figured it be a good opportunity to finally break out Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Pie and Pastry Bible. Today I just made the Basic Flakey Pie Crust. I'll get to the filling and baking later this week. Only so much time in the day. Right now I'm leaning towards the Open-Faced Double Strawberry Pie. Sounds good, no? And strawberry's are in season. Stay tuned for that. As seen below, the crust contains butter, pastry flour (I used cake flour, should have added some all-purpose), salt, baking powder, ice water, and a bit of apple cider vinegar.

Ravioli with Sun-Dried Tomato

2005-05-28T21:16:00.000-07:00

Used up the leftover ricotta from the fig dessert to make a black-pepper ravioli with sun-dried tomato ricotta filling. Got to use my pasta rolling machine for the first time. Thanks, Mom and Dad! And thanks to Alicia for helping out and coming up with a creamy tomato sauce. Delish.

Chocolate Cupcakes

2005-05-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

Made chocolate cupcakes from Cook's Illustrated magazine tonight. Was relaxing to do some nice, ordinary baking. I haven't tried them yet, but I've never had a Cook's Illustrated recipe go wrong. Oh, I did have to come up with a substitution for sour cream. I mixed cream cheese with a little heavy cream and a tiny bit of vinegar. Kinda similar, right? I added a little bit of homemade grenadine to the accompanying "simple vanilla buttercream" recipe, but it ended up having almost no effect on the frosting's color and flavor. They'll be coming with me to work tomorrow for a birthday and a going-away. Hope nobody reads this until then!

Glazed Ricotta Cheese with Figs and Port

2005-05-23T19:38:00.000-07:00

Richard Leach's recipe for Glazed Ricotta Cheese with Figs and Port, from The Making of a Pastry Chef. Consists of a bottom layer of port wine reduction with figs and sugar and a custard layer of ricotta cheese, cream cheese, cream, sugar, and vanilla. Finished with a torched-sugar creme brulee-style crust. Much better the second time I made it, when I remembered to sweeten the port.

Italian Easter Bread

2005-04-12T18:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, the last post to catch up on my backlog. This is my friend Alicia's grandmother's Italian Easter Bread recipe. I had never had the original at the time, but Alicia assures me it turned out almost authentic. It resembles Challah, I thought, but is a bit sweeter. We took half of the dough and shaped it into little twisted Easter cookies. The main bread ring, also twisted, we covered with rainbow sprinkles, a substitute for the colored sugar crystals we couldn't find in time. I ate up my share of the cookies in about a day and a half. Thanks, Alicia's grandma!

Souffleed Gnocchi

2005-04-07T18:29:00.000-07:00

Another recent recipe, Souffleed Gnocchi from the latest issue of Gourmet magazine. The ingredient list was fairly simple: milk, semolina flour, butter, eggs, grated parmesan, a pinch of salt. The process was unusual, though. You add the semolina to the simmering milk on the stovetop and cook it there for a while, sort of like pâte à choux, the dough used for making eclairs and cream puffs, then you mix in the other ingredients, then you bake it. You can see the heart-shaped cookie-cutter I was going to use in the first picture. Oddly, the only cookie-cutter I own. It ended up making pieces that were to big and unweildy to transfer to the baking dish, so I improvised with a smallish metal measuring cup. The final result was very tasty. Savory from the salt and parmesan. The texture was very different from a standard gnocchi, which is more like a dense dumpling. These felt like extra-fluffy scrambled eggs. Kinda cool, actually. I would definitely make them again, either as a breakfast item or a dinner side.

Panforte

2005-03-30T18:11:00.000-08:00

Man, am I behind on the blogging. I've got a few new recipes to write about, but I had some complications with my Flickr account (ended up upgrading to a Pro account) and not too much time to write lately. I'll probably do a separate post for each item. The first one is the Italian Panforte from Room for Dessert. This is definitely one of the stranger desserts I've ever made, just because of the large and unusual combination of ingredients. It's sort of a chocolate tart/cake/brownie thing, but it included toasted almonds and hazelnuts, candied orange peels, chocolate, cocoa powder, sugar, honey, a little flour, lots of ground black pepper, lots of cinnamon, and even a little cayenne. The honey was the only liquid (you boil it with the sugar, then add it to the mixed dry ingredients), so as you can imagine, the finished product was pretty dense. Tasted good, but a little bit different with each bite, depending on the proportion of nuts/citrus you got. And then a final spicey bite of an aftertaste.

Candied Orange and Lemon Peels

2005-03-09T21:42:00.000-08:00

Stayed up last night working on a new sort of recipe for me, candy! Specifically, candied orange and lemon peels; recipe from Room for Dessert. My folks gave me some Meyer lemons from their tree as well as some oranges and I wanted to use them all before it was too late. The candying was a pretty straightforward process, but time consuming. First, I juiced all the fruit; no point in wasting the insides. The orange juice I put in a pitcher to drink. The lemon juice I froze into an ice cube tray. I can hang onto that for months and use it in other recipes. Next, boiled the peels in water to soften them up. This took about 30 minutes for the lemons and about 50 for the oranges. Then, scraped the pith off the peels and sliced them into strips and triangles. Then the fun part... boiling the peels in lots of sugar, some water, and a little bit of corn syrup. The recipe instructed to simmer until the temperature reached 225 degress Fahrenheit, at which point most of the water has boiled off, but the sugar hasn't quite gotten to the point of caramelizing yet. At that point, I pulled the peels out of the liquid with tongs (sugar burns are PAINFUL; I recommend avoiding) and set them out to drain for a bit. Lastly, a quick toss in some granulated sugar and you're done. Candied citrus peel.

The pictures below include the fruits mid-juicing, the peel simmering in sugar, two shots of the peel drying, tossing in sugar, and the final product. Candy. Woo!

Meyer Lemon Semifreddo pictures

2005-03-02T23:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, here we go with some pictures of the Meyer Lemon Semifreddo. First, ingredients for the amaretti cookies, then two shots of the final product just coming out of the oven. Ingredients for the sponge cakes, then the cakes. Next, ingredients for the meyer lemon curd. Next, the curd being mixed with some freshly whipped cream. Finally, the assembled semifreddo, already halfway eaten before I remembered to take a picture.

Meyer Lemon Semifreddo

2005-02-21T21:38:00.000-08:00

Spent a good chunk of this weekend making the Meyer Lemon Semifreddo from Room for Dessert. No, I didn't know what a semifreddo was either until I found that link. The reason it took a while is that the dish is an assembly of several sub-recipes. Lemon curd, sponge cake, lemon syrup, and amaretti cookies. I finally had a chance to re-try the amaretti recipe from Room for Dessert. The first time, several months ago, I had the weird experience of only ending up with enough batter for about a dozen cookies, even though the recipe claimed to make 60. That's a big difference. I'm not sure what I did differently this time, other than being really paranoid about following the recipe exactly (and possibly having just read the egg chapter of the new On Food and Cooking), but I got 35 cookies this time, and I probably good have stretched that farther if I'd used a second cookie sheet. So the moral is that no, that recipe was not on crack after all. Cool. Of course, I only made the cookies so I could crush them on top of the cake. A brief, but tasty, lifespan. Pictures are ready to go and will be available as soon as Flickr resets my monthly upload quota next week. Did I really upload 10MB this month?